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xAI announces series B funding round of $6B
- chambo622 2y agoWhat is the bull case here? They close the gap to Anthropic and become a 4th place player?
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoUnique data set. And Elon. And with Elon, comes a great set of talent. From https://x.ai/about https://x.ai/about > Our team is led by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. Collectively our team contributed some of the most widely used methods in the field, in particular the Adam optimizer, Batch Normalization, Layer Normalization, and the discovery of adversarial examples. We further introduced innovative techniques and analyses such as Transformer-XL, Autoformalization, the Memorizing Transformer, Batch Size Scaling, μTransfer, and SimCLR. We have worked on and led the development of some of the largest breakthroughs in the field including AlphaStar, AlphaCode, Inception, Minerva, GPT-3.5, and GPT-4. They are already competitive despite the late start: https://x.ai/blog/grok-1.5v https://x.ai/blog/grok-1.5v
- threeseed 2y agoBut we know from Google that unless you can definitively solve the "is this sentence real or a joke" datasets like Twitter, Reddit etc are going to be more trouble than they are worth. And Elon's recent polarising nature and the callous nature with which he disbanded the Tesla Supercharger team means that truly talented people aren't going to be as attracted to him as in his early days. They are only going to be there for the money.
- LegitShady 2y ago>Twitter Supercharger team interesting.
- lynx23 2y agoI still fondly remember the story an OpenAI rep told about fine-tuning with company slack history. Given a question like "Can you do this and that please." the system answered (after being fine-tuned with said history) "Sure, I'll do it tomorrow." Teaches you to carefully select your training data.
- jokethrowaway 2y agoThe datasets should not be used for knowledge but to train a language model. Using it for knowledge is bonkers. Why not buy some educational textbook company and use 99.9% correct data? Oh and use RAG while you are at it so you can point to the origin of the information. The real evolution still has to come though, we need to build a reasoning engine (Q*?) which will just use RAG for knowledge and language models to convert its thought into human language
- dagmx 2y agoHow does one differentiate knowledge from the language model in an LLM? At least in a way that would provide a benefit?
- kolinko 2y agoYou use formal verification for logic and rags for source data. In other words - say you have a model that is semi-smart, often makes mistakes in logic, but sometimes gives valid answers. You use it to “brainstorm” physical equations and then use formal provers to weed out the correct answer. Even if the llm is correct 0.001% of the time, it’s still better than the current algorithms which are essentially brute forcing.
- dagmx 2y agoI’m still confused as to the value of training on tweets though in that scenario? If you need to effectively provide this whole secondary dataset to have better answers, what value do the tweets add to training other than perhaps sentiment analysis or response stylization?
- infotainment 2y agoDoes it, though? That was probably true pre-X™, but it seems like the primary selection metric has gone from “competence” to “doesn’t ever contradict Elon”
- talldayo 2y agoI mean, he can try. The world already has a number of AI corporations headed up by totalitarian megalomaniacs though, the market may eventually reward some other course of action.
- klyrs 2y agoIf there's one place Musk has proven his worth, it's entering a crowded market late and taking the same approach as the competition. Ah, nevermind. He's just pissing away investor money. Must be fun!
- bagels 2y agoWhat unique dataset? Tweets?
- LeoPanthera 2y agoYup. They're going to have the greatest training set of trolls, shitposts, and propaganda. The only universe they're going to end up understanding is the one inside Elon's head.
- duskwuff 2y agoI, for one, eagerly await the new insights into the universe which will be unlocked by training an AI on dril's tweets.
- sundalia 2y agoUnique? You mean tweets? Yeah sure It's 6B down the drain. Saying grok 1.5 is competitive is a joke, if it was any good it would be ranked well in chatbot arena (https://chat.lmsys.org/ https://chat.lmsys.org/). Elon is a master in hyping underperforming things and this is no exception.
- nomel 2y agoNo, there is no ranking for Grok. It’s not participating. It would be hard to judge rate of improvement at this point, since the company has only been around for 1.25 years, and grok 1.5 is yet to be released for general access.
- joeberg8 2y agoYou really think investors like sequoia and a16z are dumb enough to fall for Elon hyping things up? They know who he is and They’ve seen him operate at levels basically no other entrepreneur can snd are betting on that
- croes 2y ago>Collectively our team contributed some of the most widely used methods in the field, So they hired some guys from other AI companies.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- belter 2y agoElon Musk is planning to invoice the AI ....to Tesla and X a la Adam Neumann.... https://www.ft.com/content/2a96995b-c799-4281-8b60-b235e84aefe4 https://www.ft.com/content/2a96995b-c799-4281-8b60-b235e84ae...
- newswasboring 2y agoIsn't that ... illegal? He's just using one investor's money to another.
- sangnoir 2y agoWell, Elon Musk is holding AI development ransom unless he's granted sufficient shares in Tesla to take his holdings above 25%. So I suppose they can give him billions to solve for self-driving the "easy" way, or the "hard" way. How this is not a conflict of interest, I do not know; then again it may explain why Elon wants to reincorporate Tesla in Texas - away from Delaware courts
- belter 2y agoIt worked for Adam
- bboygravity 2y agoWhy 4th place? Got a crystal ball of substantiation or is this another case of ordinary Elon bashing?
- chambo622 2y agoI would be asking the same question if another company formed in the past year raised $6B to train LLMs. For example, Mistral raised a significantly smaller round at a much lower valuation. Just trying to learn how others see this.
- threeseed 2y agoBecause Microsoft/OpenAI, Google and Meta have unlimited money and servers to throw at AI. As do Amazon and Apple who aren't just sitting back doing nothing. So I think even 4th place is putting it nicely. Far more likely to be 6th at best.
- bboygravity 2y agoBecause winning tech-development or even AI/AGI is about who has the most money and servers?! Since when? If that's the case then why are Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and even Google not nr 1 right now? IMO the deciding factor for success is super obviously leadership. Hence why xAI got 6 billy thrown at it.
- Jensson 2y ago> If that's the case then why are Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and even Google not nr 1 right now? Microsoft is nr 1 right now, via OpenAI. Microsoft was behind on AI so they sent their compute for 49% of OpenAI and full access to OpenAI's models.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- darth_avocado 2y agoThe bull case is… they will have FSD by the end of the year… 2017…
- _cenw 2y ago2017 in base 16?
- pandemic_region 2y agothat's 7E1.
- mkl 2y ago8215. We have a while to wait yet.
- artemonster 2y agoI still dont understand why elmo is not being investigated for fraud for all these obscenely unreal claims and promises he has made over the years. this is a clear and cut definition of fraud, for which "female steve jobs" and another e-trucking clown CEO are doing their time. why not elmo?
- bboygravity 2y agoUnreal claims? Getting a deadline wrong?
- darksaints 2y agoOMG, Elon’s simps are so fucking delusional. No, being wrong about a deadline is not fraud. Selling something with a promised deadline attached to it, and being wrong about that deadline for 6+ years is fraud.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y agoHe is. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-autopilot-probe-us-prosecutors-focus-securities-wire-fraud-2024-05-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
- aaron695 2y ago> What is the bull case here? The real bull case - Elon doesn't kowtow to mentally ill basement nerds and the media/politicians trying to not lose power. Can you image someone running in to tell Elon the fat nerds on HN are in a tizzy about Grok telling people to eat rocks? Other bull case he's obviously silo-ing Twitter for unique training data. Reddit can only ask nicely you don't train off them. Twitter with a good AI could become quite strong. I'm not as bullish on this, but... Twitter is all the cutting edge news. ChatGPT was happy to be years out of date. No one cares Russia has finally manned up and launched a tactical nuke 24 hours after it happens, something new will be trending. This is Twitters strength, to the minute data. One of the AI's will have to specialize in this.
- zer0c00ler 2y ago[dead]
- tim333 2y agoI guess like OpenAI but without Altman taking it over.
- dagmx 2y agoAre there any notable people associated with this other than Elon? I’m curious what they’re bringing to the table to be able to fetch that valuation.
- YetAnotherNick 2y agoIt's literally the first sentence in the link > Our Series B funding round of $6 billion with participation from key investors including Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding, amongst others.
- saghm 2y agoThose are the people investing, right? The parent comment sounds like it's asking who is _getting_ the money.
- goralph 2y ago[flagged]
- jefozabuss 2y agoThe ones that you quoted bring the money not the technical foundation.
- silvester23 2y agoThere used to be a list of people on the about page but they changed it, apparently. Here's a snapshot that still shows it: https://web.archive.org/web/20240415120557/x.ai/about https://web.archive.org/web/20240415120557/x.ai/about I don't know enough about the AI/ML scene to say if any of these are notable people.
- belter 2y agoThere is at least one person there at the top of the Technical Team....I don't recognize from the scene, at least his name does not show as author or co-author in any ML papers I can remember reading...a certain Elon Musk.... :-)
- lionkor 2y ago> The company’s mission is to understand the true nature of the universe. I yawned so hard my jaw unlocked. Can't wait to see groundbreaking... checks notes... "advancements in various applications, optimizations, and extensions of the model". Do these companies only hire yes men?
- danieleggert 2y agoYes
- upon_drumhead 2y agoYou're hired
- ETH_start 2y agoThis is a peculiar company mission so not sure why you find it odd to make the official one of xAI. The all-encompassing nature of it seems befitting a company producing increasingly general-purpose AI.
- stonogo 2y agoSure it does. The problem is that they're not producing any general-purpose AI.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ETH_start 2y agoWhether you agree that their work constitutes advances toward more general purpose AI, they're in an industry where that is ostensibly the goal, which makes their choice of mission statement appropriate.
- nomel 2y agoX.ai was founded March 2023. That’s one year three months. Is general AI a good first goal? I think most uses, outside of LLM, will be very specialized AI, and unrelated to chat.
- floppiplopp 2y agoAnything Musk is now too many inferior products and broken promises for any sensible investor. Might as well just burn the money.
- chambo622 2y agoYet the money keeps coming, so I want to learn what I'm missing.
- infotainment 2y agoIt’s not just Musk — as soon as you hit a certain level, it basically becomes impossible to fail. I’ve noticed that even if a senior leader is ousted from a company in disgrace, another company will invariably pick that person up fairly quickly.
- piyuv 2y agoLike Yahoo’s head of search before they shut down search?
- kristopolous 2y agoAt some point it's no longer a product and a company as much as a financial instrument.
- klyrs 2y ago> I want to learn what I'm missing. The perverse thing is that betting on the irrational behavior of other investors seems paradoxically rational at this point. Just, don't get caught holding the bag.
- somenameforme 2y agoIf you take your assumptions as a given and end up at a contradiction, then there is a rather logical explanation.
- shufflerofrocks 2y agoinvestors are simply off-setting the losses to the next investor they sell to. Musk brand is still valuable and his bubble keeps growing. It is only the investors present when the bubble bursts that'll be at a loss. You only need to grow your investment, sell it off to the next person, and exit before it happens
- stealthcat 2y agoUnitree is better than Optimus. Qwen et al is better than Grok. BYD is better than Tesla.
- nomilk 2y ago> Comma.ai is better than Tesla FSD I don't know about the other comparisons mentioned, but Hotz himself said comma is/has always been about 2 years behind Tesla.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- spiderice 2y agoDid GP ninja edit their comment? I don’t see that quote
- nomilk 2y agoYup (what's quoted is precisely what was in the original comment). The reply was very soon (2 minutes) after the original comment, so perhaps GP's author corrected themselves (edited the comment) during that time (prior to noticing the reply).
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago> BYD is better than Tesla cars Are you aware of the recent issues with BYD and other Chinese EV brands? Entire dealerships have gone up in flames from dangerous vehicles. Not lone incidents but tens of dealerships at least, in just this month. Tesla cars may have flaws but there is no way a BYD can be compared to them even on the basics. And Tesla’s software is simply way better and makes it clear that it was designed by a competent tech company not an old car company. Other brands aren’t on that level yet.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
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- retrac98 2y agoI wish he’d just focus on SpaceX or Tesla (the cars, not the robot).
- BrainInAJar 2y agoIt's probably better for both companies that he isn't. Better for him to torch a $6b series B and Twitter than mess up spacex & tesla more than he already has
- andrewinardeer 2y agoThe vanity CyberTruck, I get is a mess. And that lands at Elon's feet. What mess is afoot at SpaceX that is his doing?
- tw04 2y agoHe’s been mostly too distracted with Twitter. His last one was the launch pad all his engineers told him would be a disaster that he insisted on doing anyway. That legitimately had the possibility to put them out of commission for years had the concrete seriously damaged any nearby residential properties.
- dotnet00 2y agoImagine hating someone so much you resort to making stuff up. The engineers did not think it would be a disaster, they thought it would erode as it had in previous testing (which would've been fine since the water plate system was already being designed), but hadn't expected the concrete to shatter the way it did. Nearby residential properties have already either been bought by SpaceX or are otherwise required to be evacuated before launches. Those evacuation notices are a big part of tracking when launches are actually about to happen.
- tw04 2y agoImagine being so emotionally invested in a billionaire who doesn't know who you are, that you think other people are as well. I don't hate Elon because I don't think about Elon beyond commenting on the occasional article he happens to be referenced in and shaking my head when I see him do something stupid. I'm glad he put money towards both projects (Tesla/Space-X) and got them off the ground, and now I wish he would just leave them both alone and let adults run the show. Yes, he literally took ownership of making the call for a concrete pad despite the engineers telling him it was going to fail. https://thenext30trips.com/p/scrappy-special-edition https://thenext30trips.com/p/scrappy-special-edition >Elon was clear that the decision to fly in that configuration with no water or diverter was his call, and in this case it almost destroyed the pad, accelerated the rocket’s failure, and led to the program being grounded pending FAA review. Just like he was the one who insisted on a yoke without progressive steering in the Model S that is absolute garbage and quite frankly dangerous, and any real engineer would have told him if he had cared to ask.
- rvz 2y agoLike how I have questioned so much ridiculous unjustified valuations in the AI space, with the likes of Perplexity, Stability, Inflection, etc which these AI labs are not making enough money to support themselves. How is xAI worth $24BN? I bet the reason is because Elon Musk. But until I see a significant jump in xAI making at least $100M+ a quarter, I don't think that is enough to justify that valuation to even be any where near close to Anthropic. In fact, this means Anthropic should be worth much more and the majority of other AI companies / labs (excluding OpenAI, Midjourney, Cerebras and Groq) to be worth much less. To downvoters: To date as of 2024, Anthropic's valuation is around $15BN - $18BN. So you are telling me that xAI's valuation is justified and should be worth more than Anthropic? Care to elaborate and discuss? (Especially if you're an insider.) [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/technology/amazon-anthropic-ai.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/27/technology/amazon-anthrop...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ml-anon 2y agoEven OpenAI is burning money. There is no way that xAI is worth more than Twitter. Inflection basically collapsed: the founders and best of the technical team jumped ship to MS. They were massively overvalued and basically produced nothing. Perplexity and Stability are running on pure social-media grift. Neither will be around long once their entire business model is eaten by the big players at economies of scale they will never manage. Anthropic is a weird middle ground. They seem to be doing novel and impactful research as well as shipping big performant models. But its still unclear how they end up really making money and justifying their valuation.
- andrewstuart 2y agoDo venture capitalists usually back companies with part time founder/CEOs?
- bagels 2y agoNo. But they will certainly back ones that have built multiple 100B companies.
- goethes_kind 2y agoAI is not rocket science. It's child's play compared to space tech.
- sidcool 2y agoBut we did fly rockets before reaching AI.
- andrethegiant 2y agoML < Rocket Science < AGI
- andrewstuart 2y agoThere is that, yes.
- rchaud 2y agoIt's not unheard of. Sequoia funded a company where the CEO split his time between his crypto exchange and a hedge fund.
- ergocoder 2y agoDid they raise 6B or at 6B valuation?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- upon_drumhead 2y agoRaised 6B, with something like a 18-24B valuation[1] [1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-23/musk-s-xai-nears-close-of-deal-valuing-startup-at-24-billion https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-23/musk-s-xa...
- aimazon 2y agoconsidering the names involved and why the money is needed, almost certainly $6bn raised
- danpalmer 2y agoI would bet money that this is not $6bn in cash that has been raised. It sounds like it is the raise at a $24bn valuation, but I'd bet this is less cash and more varied assets or financial instruments. Whether it's calling Teslas cheap when accounting for your time spent filling up, taking on significant debt rather than selling company shares as Tesla/SpaceX, or leveraging his personal shares for debt, Musk is always pulling some trick to reach numbers like this. That's not to say these sorts of things aren't common among the ultra-rich, but I get the impression Musk does it at every opportunity. All this to say that I don't think $6bn in cash changed hands for this, I'd expect there's credit lines secured on Musk's own valuation of the company, possibly service credits from compute providers (this can even be via VCs), or other clever tricks to inflate it.
- Brajeshwar 2y agoFirst (from the title before reading), I thought - wow, I think I should retry using x.ai (Amy) for my Calendar. How much did they sold the domain for?
- frontalier 2y agofewer than $6B
- dustincoates 2y agoThe former x.ai (scheduling) sold to an events company a few years ago and shut down. I imagine the domain was pricy, but not as much as for a company actively using it.
- abdussamit 2y agoThis is insanity ... 6B!
- ganzuul 2y agoTwice the annual budget of the Red Cross.
- lars_francke 2y agoX.ai used to be a service similar to calendly. I still mourn its shutdown and, seeing this, had hoped that it is resurrected :(
- rullopat 2y agoHe is the richest man in the world and he doesn’t have 6B in the pocket to finance it on his own?
- bagels 2y agoWhy risk your own money, when you can risk the money of others, and reap the rewards?
- Bilal_io 2y agoA rich man doesn't get rich by risking their own money. They risk the money of their investors
- NewJazz 2y agoHe has to hold as many shares of Tesla right now to make sure he can ram through the compensation package.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> he doesn’t have 6B in the pocket to finance it on his own? This isn’t how you gain allies.
- rvz 2y agoI don't think you know how this works. The rich don't risk with their own money, only the money from others. Even if they do, it is much less of their wealth on the line managed by others to grow it.
- nomilk 2y agoAsset rich doesn't imply cash rich.
- Art9681 2y agoThis is the real answer. The other commenters just don't understand how money and wealth works. Net worth doesnt mean liquid money in the bank ready to withdraw. He would have to sell his own assets which would have an impact on their value the quicker he yolo'ed those sales.
- wiradikusuma 2y agoSo.. tech winter over?
- rullopat 2y agoJust rename your company adding .AI and it will be immediately summer
- mvkel 2y ago> The company’s mission is to understand the true nature of the universe. I would think full-throated development of a diffusion model would make a lot more sense to achieve the mission, since its chief mechanism is separating signal from noise. Considering we're the only beings in the known universe that have language, I'm not sure there are many universal insights to be gleaned from an LLM
- keyle 2y agoWhat could have they possibly shown to the investors to get that kind of cash thrown at them? Asking for a friend... Did x.ai just become worth more than x.com? We must be nearing the bubble popping...
- stockboss 2y agoElon Musk
- belter 2y agoElon Musk The Fragrance Elon Musk Prada Leather Jacket Elon Musk Rectangular Sunglasses
- dgellow 2y agoThe Elon Musk Bubble, I really hope so. That’s so much capital and attention that could be spent on actual research instead of over-hyped and over-promised gimmicks
- netsharc 2y agoI wonder if the investors are just like crypto-bros and pyramid-schemers. Knowing it's bullshit, but hoping the next dumbass will come tomorrow, next week, etc, to buy it off them where they can make a profit... Considering the price of e.g. BTC, maybe thinking "People with money can't be this dumb!" is the dumbass move...
- Intralexical 2y agoThat’s when SBF told Sequoia about the so-called super-app: “I want FTX to be a place where you can do anything you want with your next dollar. You can buy bitcoin. You can send money in whatever currency to any friend anywhere in the world. You can buy a banana. You can do anything you want with your money from inside FTX.” Suddenly, the chat window on Sequoia’s side of the Zoom lights up with partners freaking out. “I LOVE THIS FOUNDER,” typed one partner. “I am a 10 out of 10,” pinged another. “YES!!!” exclaimed a third. What Sequoia was reacting to was the scale of SBF’s vision. It wasn’t a story about how we might use fintech in the future, or crypto, or a new kind of bank. It was a vision about the future of money itself—with a total addressable market of every person on the entire planet. “I sit ten feet from him, and I walked over, thinking, Oh, shit, that was really good,” remembers Arora. “And it turns out that that fucker was playing League of Legends through the entire meeting.” “We were incredibly impressed,” Bailhe says. “It was one of those your-hair-is-blown-back type of meetings.” https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlight/ https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-spotlig... Humans with money are mostly just humans that are much less likely to face real consequences if they eff it up.
- sidcool 2y agoThat's a huge round.
- dotnet00 2y ago[flagged]
- klunger 2y ago> xAI will continue on this steep trajectory of progress over the coming months, with multiple exciting technology updates and products soon to be announced. There is a lot of potential for using AI in drug discovery and development, biotech more broadly and chemistry/material science. Pharma is investing heavily in this right now. If useful, the output here could potentially also support Neuralink and even SpaceX. Coupled with the line about the "true nature of the universe", I guessed this was really about entering that space. But when you look at the careers page [https://x.ai/careers#open-roles https://x.ai/careers#open-roles], they are only hiring AI engineers. No biochemists or MDs, material scientists or any other natural science domains. So, if natural science discovery is actually on the road map, either: - it is in the long term future - they have no idea what they are doing More likely, they are not going for natural science and this is basically just a play to compete with openAI. And, in that case, I don't understand how they convinced investors to put 6 billion dollars into it.
- dagmx 2y agoThe “true nature of the universe” bit is that Elon believes that competing LLMs are too neutered because they disallow certain terms etc. (his words are much more politically charged and I do not agree with his take on this and many other things) Therefore he believes that Grok can be an LLM trained on the voices of the people using his alleged free speech platform:X.
- sangnoir 2y agoIs the assumption here is that we can somehow understand the nature of the universe if we stop censoring the common man and have an unmuzzled LLM that talks like him instead of the Bay Area AI elites? My uneducated guess is well learn more about the true nature of the common clay^w man.
- smileybarry 2y agoFor context, it should be noted that his platform disallows certain terms too, but sometimes worse (in a way). For example: saying “cis” or “cisgender” flags your post as abusive and limits visibility. Saying the 6-letter (or 3-letter) f-slur does not.
- light_triad 2y ago> We partner closely with X Corp to bring our technology to more than 500 million users of the X app. Investors paid about $12 per X user/bot. Interesting they are opting for a spinoff rather than doing this in house. Perhaps to capitalise on the hype and attract researchers who don't want the baggage of being associated with polarising brands?
- croes 2y agoSo we push billions of dollars into text and picture generators which contribute to more carbon dioxide emissions like MS already showed. At least we will go down with enough spam texts and cat pictures.
- hydroreadsstuff 2y agoDid they raise 6B or are they valued at 6B and don't disclose the raised amount? Probably the latter?
- purple-leafy 2y agoSometimes I pray for a meteor
- deeznuttynutz 2y agoFF7 style?
- shreezus 2y agoNvidia just added $6B in revenue. We’re witnessing an arms race for compute, as compute will likely be the primary constraint for building AGI.
- 3abiton 2y ago> as compute will likely be the primary constraint for building AGI. Zuck argues it's energy, and I seem to line up behind him.
- naveen99 2y agoArms races tend to bankrupt everyone except the winner. good luck to all participants.
- Aeolun 2y agoYou’d think that at some point someone realizes it’s more profitable to sell shovels…
- rchaud 2y agoAnd Qatar and Deutsche Bank can breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that their next few quarterly interest payments will be coming through after all.
- yumraj 2y agoThese investors seems to haven’t learnt a lesson after the Twitter/X eff-up. NVIDIA must be happy, $5.9B will go to it.
- qeternity 2y agoQuite a few comments here in disbelief and hating on Musk. For all the criticism of Elon, he has been foundational in Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX and OpenAI. Even if you think Tesla is troubled/overvalued, he has built multiple enormous companies, and one of a handful of people to have built a company into a $1T valuation (however fleeting). So yes, the arithmetic for VCs is very straightforward: for better or for worse, Elon Musk is able to execute in the only way that matters to investors.
- halfmatthalfcat 2y agoFoundational at Paypal and OpenAI? I've heard different. Also leaving out Twitter which has at least halved (if not more) it's valuation. I would say he's batting less than .500, so while still good, not a sure thing in the slightest and the trajectory seems to be on the down.
- Jensson 2y agoHe was for OpenAI at least, he recruited key members and convinced them to go get big funding which they did seek from Microsoft instead of Elon himself. Likely OpenAI wouldn't have gotten anywhere without his involvement, they did break off from him since he wanted too much control not because he didn't help them.
- ulfw 2y agoWhat is wrong with investors to give Elon Musk more money for his me-too products? Why would they waste $6,000,000,000?
- Aeolun 2y agoHow is it that some people get 6B to understand the true nature of the universe? It’s not like they have a track record of doing anything other than absolutely devastating a previously successful company… If I ask someone to give me 6B to understand the true nature of the universe they’d laugh in my face, but I sort of assume I’d have an even chance of doing better.
- makingstuffs 2y agoYeah, surely a better group of people to understand the universe would be, I don’t know, a team of Astro physicists whom didn’t buy a social media company so they could push their unfiltered opinions onto the masses. Just a hunch.
- whamlastxmas 2y agoAgreed, Elon has failed at everything he’s attempted and is basically broke these days, along with his companies teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. People need to stop giving him money because all he does is lose it
- pennomi 2y agoI mean, other than SpaceX, which created the world’s most reliable rocket, and delivers more mass to orbit than anyone else. Dunno how anyone could consider that a failure.
- Aeolun 2y agoYeah, but I dunno. I get the feeling that Elon is one of those people that's really good at finding the right suckers to do the job. If he leaves them alone, things go well. If he doesn't. Twitter.
- rlt 2y agoI hope the parent comment had a heavy dose of sarcasm seeing as his net worth is $200B and Tesla is also doing well. He has certainly made some bizarre choices running Twitter though.
- aredox 2y ago6 billion dollars less for really innovative ventures. 6 billion dollars less for us hackers. And certainly 6 billion dollars down the drain, funneled to stave the collapse of X/Twitter and Musk paying his dues.
- MP_1729 2y ago“You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It's easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally.” - Robert M. Pirsig The Musk reasoning here is stupid, but smart. If he makes a superhuman intelligence, he can only ask it "What is dark matter?" and it might figure out. I have some big problems with this idea, but it isn't 100% stupid. Just 98% stupid.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago"xAI is primarily focused on the development of advanced AI systems that are truthful, competent, and maximally beneficial for all of humanity. The company's mission is to understand the true nature of the universe." As if we are currently living in some _false_ representation of the universe. As it happens "AI" is proving to be a challenge to the meaning of the word "true". This makes "the 'true' nature of universe" a particularly amusing usage.
- naveen99 2y ago$6B seems like not enough ? Google, meta have spent far more, and have less to show for it than openai (which has also spent more).